For Edoardo Caovilla, creating an exquisite pair of shoes isn’t a question of time. But rather, it’s a question of expertise.

“I’m always asked, ‘How many hours do you need to make a pair of shoes?’ And I say, ‘Guys, it is never a question of time!’ If you want an answer, it is between eight and 12 hours, but it is not the time that you need to make shoes, but how many generations of secrets and knowledge you need to build that shoe. That is different,” he says.

As the third-generation Caovilla to run the family owned company, René Caovilla — he holds the title of creative director and chief operating officer — he knows a thing or two about the construction of fine footwear that goes beyond just adding a designer label to a sole.

“I grew up watching my grandfather and my father. Even though I worked in finance for many years, I still work in finance, also — the nice thing is that, the secret has been passed from generation to generation,” he admits.

A plain high-heeled pump, he explains, has at least 42 different elements of construction. Each piece comes from a different supplier. And each piece carries its own unique detail and purpose. This is then multiplied by an average range of 15 sizes. To say nothing of colour and material variations. So, to put it lightly, there are a lot of parts.

“If you don’t know how to assemble them, it could be a disaster. So, the real secret and the real knowledge is how to manage all these at least 42 parts,” he says.

A person, if given a pile of those 42 pieces would be unable to successfully assemble a René Caovilla shoe, then?

“Absolutely not,” he says with a laugh. “Not even with instructions. With video. No.”

Caovilla recalls how not even skilled artisans are able to reproduce his family’s shoes.

“I went to some of the shoemakers that are around our company. The district of Venice is where 100 per cent of the luxury women’s shoes are done. No exception,” he says. “I said, please, can you do for us 1,000 or 5,000 pairs of this? I give you materials, I give you instruction, I give you artisans, I give you everything. They say: ‘Mr. Caovilla, this for me is like a graduation. But, not even with your help, I’m not able to do that.’

“They consider us the best,” he says simply with a confident smile.

The Galaxia sandal from René Caovilla.Holt Renfrew

Speaking from The Apartment at Holt Renfrew in Vancouver in advance of a private client event last month, Caovilla explained how the company, which has roots dating to 1923 in the artisan footwear hub of Fiesso d’Artico, has built on the legacy of Italian artisanship — and style.

The company, according to Caovilla, has been driven by the “pure pleasure” of design. His grandfather, Edoardo Caovilla, started the business, and then his father, Rene Caovilla pushed it to a new level, working with high-fashion brands such as Valentino Garavani, Dior and Karl Lagerfeld at CHANEL. But, while the shoe business has provided an outlet for passion, it has proved to be only a small part of the family’s larger business “conglomerate,” according to Caovilla.

“We have had success in other ways such as banks, newspapers and real estate. This was the way for us to show how we do things. It was like a business card,” he explains of the artisan shoes. “We are very proud to be the oldest luxury shoe brand. That means a lot.”

The shoes? Like a business card?

“The shoes,” he confirms of the delicate, detail-oriented designs. “We do business in this way, and then the other businesses that we do — we do them in the same way.”

But the business hasn’t always been easy for Caovilla. Stepping into the design role in 2010, and attached to the family name as he is, he recalls how he had to fight to prove himself in the fashion world.

“I was not a designer, so the market was watching me,” he says. “I’m not a fashion victim. I live in this world, but fashion is not one of my hobbies. And shopping, not at all. So, I have my personal view of what is fashion.” But, according to Caovilla, he wasn’t afraid to work for it.

“In America, they say big name means small brains. But it depends on the way your parents grow you up. In my case, it has been amazing and I have been beyond very lucky. I have been in an amazingly rich family since I was born. But, every time there was something uncommon or very nice, both of my parents would say: ‘Well, do you enjoy it?’ And I would say, ‘Yes, we’re very happy.’ ‘Do you like it?’ ‘Yes, a lot.’ ‘Well, remember, it doesn’t belong to you. And they won’t belong to you until you learn to do things by yourself,’ ” he recalls.

Caovilla felt the pressure to succeed not just for the sake of his family, but also to prove that those who doubted him — those who pegged him as just a son in the family business who was dabbling in design, and believed he would fail — were wrong. Taking over for his father, he says, was a necessary next step.

“At that time, honestly, it was a need. Because my father was turning 72 — he is still with us today at 81 — he was too far from the customers. It’s the same thing that happened to Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani. We cannot judge them. They are King George and King (Ralph), but they are too far from the customer. There are too many generations in the middle,” he says. “If there is a jump of 10-20 years. It’s OK. If there’s a jump of 60-70 years, it is not.”

Caovilla felt the brand’s designs had become too “dusty.” They needed, he said, to become, “more cool, more sexy, more comfortable.” And Caovilla wanted to push René Caovilla beyond a shoe brand, evolving it into what he refers to as a “worldwide women’s luxury brand.” To accomplish this lofty goal, Caovilla decided to focus back on the basics, those that his grandfather had originally built his business upon more than 90 years ago.

“I decided the company was born in high-heeled sandals and we needed to go back to that. We need to be, again, No. 1 in that particular style,” he says. “After we worked at that for a few years, we took back leadership in that position, and then we started to enlarge.”

Not overly concerned with trends, Caovilla says he’s more interested in keeping the brand in the ultra-luxury category, and not in the trend-driven fashion realm. And it appears to be working.

“In terms of positioning, no one brand — neither of the two luxury houses, Hermès or CHANEL, and all the other fashion houses — have been able to sell at our price point, as much shoes as we are doing now,” he says of the average $1,200-per-shoe price range. “It means that you are creating a market. You’re not taking market share from other brands — you’re creating a market.”

With his eyes set firmly on positioning the René Caovilla brand alongside these top-tier family owned brands, he’s determined to eschew the retail trend of offering customers instant gratification with so-called See Now, Buy Now models, preferring instead to make his customers wait for each seasonal release.

“At that point, customers become like your kids. I have three kids and for me, customers and kids are quite similar. You work every day for them, and you are ready to do whatever is possible for them. But that doesn’t mean that you always say yes or you give them everything. If you do that, you ruin the relationship and they grow up without respect for you,” he says. “They don’t understand how much hard work, how much patience and how much work you do to create something. In the past, when people started to talk about, ‘See now, buy now’ I was like, what the hell? What is this? Nothing that has value — from a tree, to the birth of a baby or a good wine — takes place in a second. Nothing.”

He’s confident the luxury customers who buy his shoes will be prepared to wait for them.

“The people that are facing and embracing Caovilla, maybe they don’t know how many secrets or how much knowledge there is in a shoe like this … but they perceive it. And that’s the reason we are growing,” he says.

In the future, Caovilla plans to introduce new categories such as handbags, custom jewelry and eyeglasses to the line, sayings it’s an obvious next step to offer customers an extension of their brand DNA. But, while the product offering will undoubtedly change, one thing most definitely will not, he assures: the ownership.